THIS IS WHAT CREATED THE INNOVATIONS OF THE FOLLOWING DECADES AS THE US EXPLODED WITH INDUSTRY AND THE MIDDLE-CLASS GREW. IT WAS PURELY FUNDED BY TAXPAYER MONEY AND CORPORATIONS WERE THERE TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE.
So, what happened in the late1980s - 2000s......Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton...... to make the US become the poorly educated people you see today....unable to read or do basic math? The same elite universities trying to privatize public education now......Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, etc. decided to change the style of teaching to one that removed books from teaching, that used group learning in ways that left many students behind, frowned on giving bad grades, and then allowed them passage through school grades with a wink and a nod. No rigor or accountability. Why leave a style of learning that gave stellar results to this style everyone could see would weaken education attainment? SOME MIGHT FIND A CONSPIRACY IN THIS IF ONE LOOKS AT THE TIMING.....REAGAN JUST ANNOUNCES A RETURN TO CORPORATE CONTROL AND PROFIT, LOW TAXES THAT WILL NOT ALLOW THE US TO AFFORD PUBLIC EDUCATION, AND SMALLER GOVERNMENT WITH CLINTON EMBRACING THE SAME. CORPORATIONS NEED LOTS OF FOLLOWERS THEY SAID AND FEWER LEADERS AND AFTER ALL, THE ELITE SCHOOLS OFFERED THE LEADERS SO WHY EDUCATE THE MASSES.
This is exactly what we have today. The 1% are trying to make a school system that recognizes the elite schools as the place of leaders and the middle/lower class to follow along. That is after all how it was a century ago. THEY ARE ELIMINATING THE 1950s - 1970s.
THIS IS WHAT EDUCATION REFORM IS ABOUT. WE DON'T WANT IT!!!
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT!!!!
WE WANT A WRITE-IN IN NOVEMBER FOR CARDIN, SARBANES, AND CUMMINGS!!!
YOU'LL SEE BELOW THE DRIVER OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION, JOHN DEWEY. HIS VISION SAW ALL PEOPLE AS CITIZENS AND SAW THE NEED TO BROADEN BASIC EDUCATION TO INCLUDE THE HUMANITIES, NOT JUST MATH, SCIENCE, AND READING. HE WAS A LIBERAL AND AS SUCH VALUED AN EDUCATION THAT PREPARED FOR WORK, BUT HE UNDERSTOOD THAT A HEALTHY SOCIETY REQUIRED A BALANCED APPROACH IN K-12. PHRASES LIKE 'LEARNING IS A SOCIAL AND INTERACTIVE PROCESS' AND 'EDUCATION SHOULD NOT REVOLVE AROUND A PRE-DETERMINED SET OF SKILLS' DESCRIBED THE BALANCE STUDENTS ACHIEVED UPON GRADUATION THAT MADE ALL PEOPLE CAPABLE OF ADVANCING AND LEADING.
THIS IS WHAT THESE 1% ARE TRYING TO KILL. THEY WANT A SELECTED SET OF LEADERS FROM ELITE SCHOOLS AT TOP. LOOK AT THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION......ALL THIRD WAY CORPORATE SPEAKERS......MOST CONNECTED TO HARVARD......ALL OF THEM WORKING FOR WEALTH AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.
John Dewey (/ˈduːi/; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of progressive education and liberalism.
On education Main article: Democracy and Education Dewey's educational theories were presented in My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938).
Throughout these writings, several recurrent themes ring true; Dewey continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.
The ideas of democracy and social reform are continually discussed in Dewey's writings on education. Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one's full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that "to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities" (1897, p. 6).[25] In addition to helping students realize their full potential, Dewey goes on to acknowledge that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform. He notes that "education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction" (1897, p. 16).
The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences (p. 9).
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THIS ARTICLE BY THE CONSERVATIVE CATO INSTITUTE WANTS TO SHOW THE BURDEN OF EDUCATION POLICY BUT IN SO DOING THEY HIGHLIGHT EXACTLY WHAT ALLOWED THE US SCHOOLS TO BECOME THE BEST. IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT REFORM IS REVERSING MUCH OF THIS. THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION IS NOW BASICALLY RUN BY CORPORATIONS.......BANKS AND FOR-PROFIT EDUCATION GROUPS; MUCH OF EDUCATION FUNDING IS GOING INTO INFRASTRUCTURE FOR CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS RATHER THAN CLASSROOMS; CHARTERS ARE RETURNING SCHOOLS TO SEGREGATION; AND TEACHERS ARE BERATED AND BEING REPLACED BY LESS-PROVEN STAFF. ALL OF THE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY GAINS OF THE 50s AND 60s ARE BEING DISMANTLED UNDER THE GUISE OF 'MAKING THINGS BETTER'.
K-12 Education Subsidies
Print PDF by Neal McCluskey CATO Institution
World War II and its aftermath provided another impetus for increased federal intervention. The Lanham Act of 1941 and a 1950 law authorized “impact aid” to compensate school districts for tax revenue lost because of the presence of federal facilities. Also, dozens of bills were introduced in Congress in the post-war years to finance local school construction in response to the post-war baby boom.15
Then the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik scared Americans into thinking that the Soviets were ahead in science, and it inspired an obsession to “fix” America’s schools. For the first time, the federal government initiated curriculum and goal-setting policies, leading to passage of the 1958 National Defense Education Act aimed at increasing funding for mathematics, science, and foreign language programs.16
Rising Federal Intervention since the 1960s The federal government’s expansion into education grew by leaps and bounds during the 1960s. Federal education funding became a part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” which focused on anti-poverty and civil rights measures to ensure equal access to education. The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was landmark legislation, and it remains the nucleus of federal K-12 policy today.
The law’s Title I was supposed to provide grants to schools in high-poverty areas, but it rapidly morphed into a broad-based subsidy program. From an initial focus on poor districts, Title I had expanded so much by the 1968–69 school year that it was subsidizing 60 percent of the nation’s school districts. Today, Title I is the largest K-12 program, costing taxpayers more than $15 billion annually.
The 1965 act also created subsidies for teacher training, educational research, school libraries, textbooks, student literacy, school technology, and other items. The act even helped beef up state school bureaucracies directly with new “grants to strengthen state departments of education.” A 1972 law created a slew of new federal education subsidy programs, as well as new education bureaus, institutes, and councils.
In 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act required states to ensure free public education to all disabled students, and it spelled out in great detail what services school districts are required to provide. The result has been massive bureaucratic costs and a “lawyers’ playground” of legal battles between school districts and parents regarding what services schools must provide to meet federal mandates. Today, special education is the second largest K-12 program, costing federal taxpayers nearly $12 billion annually.
In 1976, the National Education Association endorsed Jimmy Carter for president, partly because of Carter’s promise to create a Department of Education.17 It was the first time the NEA had endorsed a presidential candidate in the more than a century of its existence, but the NEA had long supported the creation of a federal department. Indeed, NEA’s website says that in 1867 it “won its first major legislative victory when it successfully lobbied Congress to establish a federal Department of Education.”18 In 1979, after a lobbying push by the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers, and other groups, Congress narrowly passed legislation to split a new Department of Education off from the existing Department Health, Education, and Welfare.
Equal Education Opportunities Act of 1974
The Equal Education Opportunities Act of 1974 is a civil rights statute that prohibits states from impeding students' right to equal educational opportunities on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin. Of note, the act specifies that states may not deny equal educational opportunities to students because an educational agency has not taken the appropriate action to help students overcome language barriers.